[frdmfghtr]

I have Time Machine backing up to an external drive, but the drive seems to be failing. Disk Utility returns errors when verifying the disk, but cannot fix them as OS X is mounting the drive as read-only. I get an error that says, to effect, "this drive is failing and mounted read-only. Back it up as soon as possible."

I'm trying to copy the Time Machine database from the failing drive to a new external drive. Disk Utility won't restore from the failing drive, claiming that the new drive doesn't have enough room. This is not true; the TM database is at least 20 GB smaller than the free space. Dragging and dropping isn't working either.

I can drag and drop the other folder on the drive, which is a copy of my Parallels drive.

I really hate to have to start Time Machine over again and lose all my backup data; I've had Time Machine running since Leopard Day One.

Any hints would be greatly appreciated.

[frdmfghtr]

Quick addition: the fsck_hfs log output reads as follows:


/dev/rdisk1s3: fsck_hfs run at Thu Dec 27 20:28:13 2007
/dev/rdisk1s3: ** /dev/rdisk1s3 (NO WRITE)
/dev/rdisk1s3: QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM DIRTY

/dev/rdisk1s3: fsck_hfs run at Thu Dec 27 20:28:13 2007
/dev/rdisk1s3: ** /dev/rdisk1s3
/dev/rdisk1s3: ** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
/dev/rdisk1s3: ** Checking Extents Overflow file.
/dev/rdisk1s3: ** Checking Catalog file.
/dev/rdisk1s3: ** Checking multi-linked files.
/dev/rdisk1s3: Incorrect number of file hard links
/dev/rdisk1s3: ** Checking Catalog hierarchy.
/dev/rdisk1s3: ** Checking Extended Attributes file.
/dev/rdisk1s3: ** Checking multi-linked directories.
/dev/rdisk1s3: ** Checking volume bitmap.
/dev/rdisk1s3: ** Checking volume information.
/dev/rdisk1s3: ** Repairing volume.
/dev/rdisk1s3: Previous ID in a hard link chain is incorrect (id = 2776680)
/dev/rdisk1s3: (It should be 2819707 instead of 2793177)
/dev/rdisk1s3: ** The volume SMSNG300GB could not be repaired.

Is there something special about a Time Machine volume that Disk Utility can't be used to verify or repair it? I wouldn't think so but thought it a good question to ask anyway.

[frdmfghtr]

Well, I tried Disk Warrior 4 on the drive, and got nowhere, except repeated kernel panics. I'm about to accept that there is something afoul here and wipe the drive clean; I've started using a new drive in place of the corrupt one for Time Machine.

[Chuckit]

Maybe try Carbon Copy Cloner?

BTW, if the dialog was right and the drive is just plain failing, repair programs aren't going to do anything except possibly make the problem worse, because they can't physically repair the drive.

[Cold Warrior]

What sort of text are you getting after any 'backtrace' entires in your KP logs? That can point to the issue sometimes.